700-pound cow killed in accident with Dodge Ram

Driver says she's lucky her smaller car was low on gas.

Driver says she's lucky her smaller car was low on gas.

January 13, 2006|CHRISTINE COX Tribune Staff Writer

NILES -- What was black, shaggy, 700 pounds and dead on the side of the St. Joseph Valley Parkway near the state line? With only part of its side and rump visible to passing cars, the animal probably puzzled drivers heading south on the bypass on Wednesday and Thursday. It definitely wasn't the typical deer, raccoon or stiff-legged opossum we expect in roadkill. Sad to say, it was a cow. What's known of this cow tale started in Wednesday's wee hours when Patricia Henges, 42, of Elkhart, was driving home from her job at Airborne Express in Niles. "Imagine this dark, rainy night at 4 o'clock in the morning and something runs across the street," Henges said Thursday. "I thought it was a deer, but ... that's a big deer. All I saw was black." She was just a few hundred feet away from the Indiana state line when she hit the animal with her Dodge pickup, veering off into a cornfield with the air bag inflating in her face. Recovering from the initial shock of the wreck, Henges, a former Ohio state police trooper, got out of the truck to see what the heck she'd hit. The young steer with attached ear tag, halter and lead, was estimated at 700 to 800 pounds, and died instantly. Henges thinks it was an Angus, although "I'm no cow expert." She called 911 and reported the accident to the Michigan State Police. On Thursday, Paula Spiker, administrative assistant for the Niles state police post, said the owners still had not been located, though troopers were looking. "It seems like I've been on this case all morning," she said. Meanwhile, Henges was hearing "every cow joke yesterday, no bull about it," she said. "Robin (Beck, Henges' partner) told me this does not qualify as cow tipping," Henges said. Though Beck's 1997 Dodge Ram appears totaled, Henges is thankful she drove it and not her Dodge Intrepid that night. She only took the truck because her car was out of gas. "In my Intrepid, it would have been in the seat with me," she said. Henges has hit so many deer in her life "I quit counting," she said. As a trooper and having grown up in rural Ohio, she's seen every sort of animal meet its fate on the roadway. The cow was removed Thursday afternoon, said Tim Waaso, garage maintenance supervisor for the Niles garage of the Michigan Department of Transportation. Anyone with information should call the state police at (269) 683-4411. Staff writer Christine Cox: ccox@sbtinfo.com (574) 235-6173